all Cuba, and the disease soon broke out among the other troops sent there. Among non-immunes, and below the frost-line, what hope was there of stopping the spread of yellow fever? Only that some hero might strip this giant of his invisible coat, and, by showing what path he followed from death-bed to death-bed, enable us to guard and close it. That hero came, and in all our history there is no nobler story than that of his triumphant sacrifice.
It had long been suspected by several doctors that the germs of yellow fever were carried to fresh victims, neither by contact nor in infected clothing, but by certain species of mosquitos. Dr. Carlos Finlay, an old Havana physician, had declared this belief as early as 1883. But no one could say for certain, because yellow fever is a disease that attacks only human beings, and to make the necessary experiments there were required, not mice or guinea-pigs, but living men.
One night in July, 1900, four surgeons of the United States Army Medical Corps met in Havana, where they had been sent as a Yellow-Fever Commission, and decided that the time had come when these experiments must be made. With full knowledge of the fearful nature of the disease, these doctors agreed that before they called for others to volunteer, they would make the first experiments on their own bodies.
But one of the four, Dr. Aristides Agramonte, a Cuban, was an immune and therefore could take no part in the tests; and another, Major Walter Reed, was almost immediately recalled to Washington. The two others, Jesse William Lazear, an American, and James
